In the last part of my interview with clinical geneticist and author Dr. Robert Marion, he touches on the inadequate way in which medical schools teach genetics (a topic near and dear to Dr. Steve Murphy’s heart).

How do you expect the genome revolution to change the way you practice medicine?

The genome revolution will lead to a second revolution, this one in medicine. Rather than being a field in which physicians wait for symptoms and signs to develop, allowing us to react and treat them, we will know, through newborn or prenatal screening, which mutations and polymorphisms are present, giving us information about the likelihood of the development of disease later in life. And rather than being reactive, medicine will become predictive, with physicians focusing on ways of manipulating the environment in order to prevent those alterations in the genes from manifesting diseases.

Unfortunately, the lesson of the genome revolution has not yet broken through to medical school education committees. The traditional way in which physicians are trained will soon become outmoded; we geneticists need to begin to lobby to change the curricula of medical schools now, so that the physicians who care for us tomorrow will have the necessary knowledge to be able to approach this brave new world of medicine.